such thing. Thus it came to pass that the Senate, meeting the next day,
were astonished beyond measure to see a great multitude of women
gathered together at the doors, who besought them not to make any
change; or, if any, certainly not to permit that a man should have more
wives than one. Then the young Papirius told the story how his mother
had questioned him, and how he had devised this story to escape from her
importunity. Thereupon the Senate, judging that all boys might not have
the same constancy and wit, and that the State might suffer damage from
the revealing of things that had best be kept secret, made this law,
that no sons of a senator should thereafter come into the House, save
only this young Papirius, but that he should have the right to come so
long as he should wear the _praetexta_."

While this general education was going on, the lad was receiving some
definite teaching. He learned of course to read, to write, and to
cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large characters for the benefit
of his sons portions of history, probably composed by himself or by his
contemporary Fabius, surnamed the "Painter" (the author of a chronicle
of Italy from the landing of Aeneas down to the end of the Second Punic
War). He was tempted to learn by playthings, which ingeniously combined
instruction and amusement. Ivory letters--probably in earlier times a
less costly material was used--were put into his hands, just as they are
put into the hands of children now-a-days, that he might learn how to
form words. As soon as reading was acquired, he began to learn by heart.
"When we were boys," Cicero represents himself as saying to his brother
Quintus, in one of his Dialogues, "we used to learn the 'Twelve
Tables.'" The "Twelve Tables" were the laws which Appius of evil fame
and his colleagues the decemvirs had arranged in a code. "No one," he
goes on to say, "learns them now." Books had become far more common in
the forty years which had passed between Cicero's boyhood and the time